Apov
I never thought I'd be in a jail cell. Bailing Thea out of one, yeah, I could totally see that happening at some point in my life, but never did I think it would be me locked behind bars. I guess it wasn't quite the same. Instead of iron, they were made of celestial bronze to keep demigods and monsters in, and I wasn't really a prisoner. Not yet anyways. This was just where Nina had stuck me while she and her council decided what to do with me. She'd offered to take me on a tour of their facility, provided I wore the uniform they put their men in, but I'd said no. Thea's sarcasm must have been rubbing off on me, because when she'd asked why, I told her that orange didn't do much for the color of my eyes. Perhaps it was exactly that comment that had landed me here, or maybe the fact that they didn't like me because I was the son of Zeus. They and my brothers didn't exactly have the best track record and not for the first time I found myself cursing Hercules's reputation. I was convinced my life would have been at least thirty five percent easier if he'd, as Thea put it, 'just taken a chill pill every once in a while'. Granted, Hera didn't help but still… He wasn't a fun person to be related to.
I reflected on this as I stared at the ceiling of my cell, which like the rest of it, had been painted white. I didn't know how long I'd been here. My watch had broken in the crash and there were no windows for me to gauge the time by the sky, but it felt like several hours and I had a feeling Nina rather enjoyed having the son of Zeus under her control. She didn't seem like the person who'd give that up easily and as my stomach started to growl, I guessed it was well passed five o'clock.
The metal bench I was laying on wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was a lot better than the concrete floor. Trying to ignore the fact that I hadn't eaten since my late breakfast with Thea, I watched sparks of electricity dance across the cell wondering where she was and if she was ok. I mean, I was sure she was. I almost felt bad for any monster that was foolish enough to try and cross her path but that had been a pretty bad crash. What if she'd been injured? Her speed would do her no good if she couldn't run.
These thoughts bothered me than I would have liked to allow them. The longer I thought about it, the more I was convinced that something had to have happened to her.
'You're being ridiculous.' I berated myself. 'You've seen Thea literally walk off buildings and she was fine.'
'But what if she's not,' said a quiet voice in the back of my mind and I felt a pang of fear to through me.
"She is." I said.
'You don't know that,' the voice said softly, sounding cruelly amused. 'In fact, you don't know anything thats happened to her. She could have been found by monsters or the fall could have killed her.'
"Thea doesn't fall." I said and it laughed.
'You've seen her fall Adam. You see it almost every night.'
"Shut up." I said angrily.
"Talking to yourself already?" said a voice and I sat up to see one of the Amazons looking at me through the bars. She looked to be about sixteen with shoulder length blonde hair and brown eyes that were looking at me with interest. "I must say I'd hoped you'd be a little more resilient. We didn't even torture you."
"What are you going to do with me then?" I asked.
I didn't know much about the Amazons, usually Thea would be the person I turned to when it came to this sort of information, but I had a hard time believing it was their custom to lock up every male demigod they stumbled across. But maybe once again, because of who my father was, I was a special case. Or maybe they just hated Hercules that much.
"You're about to find out. Put your hands through the bars in one gap. And don't try any shocks." She said tapping the bars with a smile. "You'll regret it.
I did as I was told and she slapped a pair of hand cuffs over my wrists that looked to be made of the same bronze as the bars. She smiled then unlocked the door.
"Let's go handsome." She said amused grabbing the chain and dragging me not too gently out of the detainment room.
She dragged me through the facility where I saw girls walking freely in a mix of modern clothes and traditional Greek armor, holding a variety of things like weapons, tablets, and shipping boxes.
"So." She said with interest as I passed a line of defeated looking boys all in the orange suit that I'd refused. "You got a girlfriend?"
"Yes." I said stiffly and she looked a little upset.
"That's too bad." She said. "The girls are going to be disappointed. They've all been challenging each other, threatening to duel for who gets you if Nina decides to keep you."
"I'm not something you can own." I said irritated and she laughed.
"Here you are."
I followed her through a ware house where more jumpsuit clad boys were sorting merchandise both mortal and mythological, over seen by girls with swords.
"How can you justify this to yourself?" I asked looking at her and she raised an eyebrow.
"Justify what?"
"Enslaving all these guys?"
"Enslaving?" she asked and then let out a shout of laughter. "Oh that's hilarious."
"What is?"
"You think they're here against their will? That's adorable."
"Then why are they?" I asked unable to imagine why anyone would subject themselves to this sort of humiliation by their own volition.
"Because we asked them to be." She said as if this explained everything and when I looked at her confused she continued. "They're our boyfriends."
"Boyfriends?" I asked in disbelief.
"Yeah." She said as if this made perfect sense and I felt an eyebrow raise. The words 'controlling' and 'psycho' came to mind, and I felt a sudden rush of appreciation for my relationship with Thea.
She led me to an office portion of the complex with bare white walls and smelled like new carpet.
"In there." She said opening a heavy mahogany door and pushing me inside where several girls, who seemed to be on the older side of the Amazon age range, sat in full armor, at a long polished wooden table where Nina sat at the head.
"Thank you Lidia." Nina said smiling at the blonde who nodded, gave me one last look of interest, then stepped out of the room. "How are you Adam?"
"Shackled." I said flatly and while several of the girls looked at me annoyed, Nina laughed.
"And I was told you didn't have a sense of humor." She said with a grin and while several retorts came to me, I decided just to keep my mouth shut. "Won't you sit down?" she continued gesturing towards the opposite end of the table from her where an empty chair stood.
"What do you want with me?" I asked.
"I want you to sit down." She said testily. "After which we shall discuss your fate."
I could just imagine Thea's face if she'd had to deal with Nina. The temptation to roll her eyes might have been so much that they popped right out of their sockets, but I walked towards the end of the table and sat, and Nina smiled, but it wasn't kind.
"Excellent. Now Adam. Usually we have a fairly cordial relationship with the demigods of the Grecian and Roman camps, and while we're concerned with your story about the disappearance of Hermes, I'm afraid we cannot allow you to leave."
"Of course you can't." I said dully.
"As you might have guessed, it's on a count of who your father is."
"What a shock."
She paused, obviously wondering if the pun had been intentional, but then moved on.
"My court and I have been talking, and we've come to the decision that instead of letting you go. We will enter negotiations with your father, in an attempt to trade you."
"Trade me?" I asked raising an eyebrow. "With what?" Did they honestly think my father considered me to be that valuable of a bargaining chip? If they did, they were in for disappointment.
"Not what." She said as around me, I saw that around the table, the Amazon's eyes all glittered with the same sort of malice. "But who. I hope you see that it's noting personal, we have nothing against you, but your brother Hercules's betrayal of Queen Hippolyta has been an injustice that has plagued our society for centuries. He has not answered for his crimes, and we shall pass judgment on him once your father gives us to him in exchange for you."
I stared at them for a full thirty seconds.
"Yeah, he's not going to do that." I said eventually and the girls lining he table started to whisper, some looking at Nina who looked angry.
"Why shouldn't he? One son of Zeus for another, it's an even exchange."
"Are you insane? My dad can't be bothered to send even a birthday card to me each year, let alone care that you've captured me." I said trying to inject reason into my tone. "Do you really think he's going to exchange a demigod, for an actual god? I don't care what you think is fair, he's not going to trade me for his favorite son."
Nina hesitated for a moment, but a girl with braided red hair and cold blue eyes piped up.
"He's lying." She said glaring at me savagely as several of them nodded in agreement. "He just wants us to set him free."
"I'm not lying." I said tonelessly.
"We should at least call Olympus my lady." Another girl, this one brunette, said looking at Nina who considered her.
"I think you're right." Nina said frowning. "We'll hold the boy until we can talk to his father. Then, we'll decide what to do with him."
"You'll be wasting your time." I said shaking my head standing up.
"Where do you think you're going?" Nina asked raising an eyebrow. "I didn't tell you you could leave."
"I don't much feel like sitting here and listening to my father refuse your deal. I'd rather just go back back to my cell."
Tpov
It wasn't hard to figure out what had happened to Adam after we reached the crash sight.
"Who are they?" Dennis asked frowning as we laid in the grass, poking our heads over one of the hills behind the chariot and saw two armored teenage girls guarding it, obviously keeping the chariot safe until Apollo came to reclaim it.
"Amazons." I said looking at the warriors with interest. "Well that explained what happened to Adam."
"Like Wonder Woman?" he asked and I stared at him. "What?"
"Do they look like they're going to go running around in a one piece and a tiara?"
"She was an amazon." He said stubbornly.
"Yeah, I wouldn't go shouting that comparison." I said sagely. "Unless you have an ambition to be flattened like a pancake."
Both girls were nearly a foot taller than him with a strong build, and had a very 'daughter of Ares' look about them.
"Think we could take them?" he asked raising an eyebrow and I smacked the back of his head again.
"What was that for?" he asked indignantly.
"What did I just tell you?"
"Right. Be smart, avoid fights."
"Exactly."
"Well then what exactly do you expect to do?"
"Nothing." I said honestly.
"Nothing?" he asked indignantly. "Thea. They have your boyfriend. Aren't you going to go all crazy and challenge them or something?"
I raised an eyebrow at him.
"Have you ever seen me instigate a fight?" I asked.
"Well… no." he said. "I guess normally people pick fights with you. But they have Adam."
"Ok you're still not getting this whole thinking thing." I said rolling my eyes and ducking back behind the hill, dragging Dennis with me. "First off, they don't have Adam. They're guarding the chariot, and Adam is probably at their base in the city. Second, they are highly trained and extremely loyal warriors. Fighting them would just risk a chance at injury which would make Adam harder to find, and even if we win, they're not going to tell us where their sisters are. They'd rather die before betray them. And if we lose, we'll either a, be taken captive ourselves, or b, be very dead. Finally, most of the Amazons are demigods themselves, they're not going to hurt him. In fact I'm surprised they took him at all, but I guess they want to use him for something which means they want him alive. Tangling with them serves no purpose, got it?"
He nodded.
"So then what do we do?"
"We go back to the city. He can't be too far. How'd you get here?"
"Snuck on to a bus, then hoped out the emergency exit when I got close enough." He said.
I glanced at the Seattle skyline. The distinctive Space Needle pierced the sky and it was hard to tell, but it looked several miles away. Not something we could walk quickly.
"We're going to have to fly." I said flatly.
"Excuse me?" he asked raising an eyebrow.
"There's no other way."
"What do you mean fly?" he asked but I'd already grabbed him.
"Hang on."
"What are you-ooohhh my gods!" He shouted as the ring Adam had given me glowed and the wind gathered around us, then we shot into the air. "Thea! What the hell?"
I laughed as below us, the Amazon's shrieked in surprise, then after reaching a decent altitude, we shot towards the city.
It took a little less then ten minutes to reach the city airborne. I'd quite enjoyed the flight the cold air whipping through my hair, but I was pretty sure Dennis was screaming and swearing the whole way there.
"Never again." He said his voice shaking as we touched down on the top of a coffee house and I laughed. "You're insane Thea. You actually enjoyed that?"
"It takes some getting used to." I admitted walking towards the rickety iron ladder that lead down to the alley next to the building.
"How often do you do that?" he asked.
"Depends on how high up I am and if I've annoyed Adam." I said remembering our last conversation on the roof of our school.
Neither Dennis nor I bothered climbing the whole way down to ground. We dropped from a height that wouldn't break our ankles and then walked out onto the city street and I looked around the city with a smile. Though very different from DC, I couldn't help but think it was beautiful. It was a bright, slightly cold, breezy day and fall decorations lined the shops.
"It's a lot colder here." Dennis said pulling his jacket around him.
"Hey, you're the one who ran off. No one's forcing you to be here."
"That doesn't mean it's not cold."
"Suck it up Dennis, we're on a mission." I said as we waiting for a couple of hipster girls to pass us before we crossed the street.
"So where are we going anyways?" Dennis asked looking around. "Where does a tribe of amazon warriors… hang out?"
"I dunno. Go into the Starbucks and ask."
"Very funny." He said scowling. I was about to suggest we look for a city map, when I spotted a group of wild looking boys in their early twenties and late teens, that were attracting stares from passers by and I felt my mouth fall open.
"Blake?" I asked in shock and one of the boys turned.
"Thea?" he said looking just as surprised and then laughed. "Guys. This is the girl I was talking about the other day. The klepto with the school bus."
"Tess's friend?" one of them asked.
"Yeah." He said laughing. "You guys go on a head. I'll catch up later."
"Alright." One of them said and they continued down the side walk while Blake jogged across the road without bothering to look to see if anyone was coming, earning him several rude hand gestures from the drivers who'd almost hit him.
"How do I keep running into you? I thought you were at camp with Tess?" he asked amused then glanced at Dennis. "Who's this?"
"This is my little brother, Dennis. Dennis, this is my friend Blake, Tess's boyfriend." I said looking down at Dennis whose eyebrows had shot up at Blake's appearance. He'd gotten a few more piercings since I'd last seen him, and his hair was shorter now and one solid color. Lemon yellow.
"I didn't know you had a brother." He said looking down at Dennis with a grin. "But I can see the family resemblance." He looked back at me and seemed to take in my injuries. "What happened to you guys? What are you even doing in Seattle?"
"Just sight seeing." I said shrugging and he rolled his eyes.
"You are so full of crap." He said impatiently. "You look like you tried to take a bath in a food processor."
"Why are you here?" I asked as Dennis continued to look between us as we spoke.
"That was my band." He said gesturing back towards the group that had just left. "We're on tour. There's a pretty big show going on tonight, well big for us anyways, in this old abandoned warehouse. Tons of bands are going to be there. You should come. The tickets are sold out but if I say you're part of the crew I could get you in."
"That's nice of you to offer us a chance to carry your speakers." I said rolling my eyes and he laughed. "But I don't think we can make it. We've got stuff we've got to do."
"That's too bad." He said sounding disappointed. "Do you at least have a place to crash for the night?"
"No actually."
"Well if you change your mind." He said reaching into his wallet and pulling out a receipt from the coffee shop we'd just climbed off of, then scribbling an address with a pen from one of his many jacket pockets. "Here's the address of the show. You can crash with us after words. Our drummer has a cousin here that's letting us stay at his apartment while he's out of town."
"Cool thanks." I said grinning.
"No problem, I hope you come but I gotta go. We're doing the final set list and equipment check soon. I'll see you around."
"Yeah, see you." I said amused as I saw him pull a lighter out of his pocket and unconsciously letting it spark in and out of life as he walked. Some people never changed...
"Please tell me you never dated that guy." Dennis said warily breaking me from my thoughts and I looked down at him.
"Why?" I asked laughing. "Blake's awesome."
"His head looks like a tennis ball. Is he really Tess's boyfriend?"
"Yeah." I said amused. "And no, Blake and I never dated. Just caused a lot of trouble together."
Figuring we should find out more about the city before we started to make a plan, I suggested to Dennis we find a visitor's center which he agreed and we walked in silence for a while, and I wondered where Adam was, and if he was ok.
I wasn't too worried. There weren't many things Adam could handle and the Amazons, even though they worshipped gods of war, weren't totally unreasonable. I did believe what I'd told Dennis, I didn't think they'd hurt him and even if he tried, I knew he'd be alright. Odds are he'd only agreed to go with them to avoid a fight.
"Thea?" Dennis asked after about ten minutes. He seemed to be struggling with something.
"Yeah?"
"Look, about what I said earlier…"
"We don't have to talk about it." I said shaking my head.
"It's just-"
"Dennis."
"Look I'm sorry alright?" he said glancing up at me. "It's just, I guess part of me is mad at Adam because we used to do a lot together before you two started dating, and then you were either so busy prepping for your new school or spending time with him I didn't get to see you as much. I guess I just felt he was trying to change you."
He sighed.
"I guess I missed all the time we spent together, you teaching me things. When you guys started dating, it was like you just didn't have time for me."
I looked at him a little guiltily, while I knew I had tons of siblings all over the world and saw most of them at camp, growing up I'd always been an only child so I'd never really known what it was like to have a little brother. Even when I got to camp and I knew how all my siblings were related to me, there were so many of us it that it was hard to have a usual brother or sister relationship like Adam and Daisy. Often it just felt like we were a bunch of cousins living together. Most of us tended to have certain siblings we were closer with, like Austin and I, or Kevin and Jessica and while I loved all my younger brothers and sisters, and looked out for all of them, I could honestly say I'd never felt like so much like a big sister until Dennis had come along.
"I'm sorry I made you feel that way." I said quietly and he shrugged.
"I guess it doesn't matter. It's not like it was personal. You were too busy for everyone, not just me."
"I'm never too busy for my protégé." I said and he smiled. "And if you wanted me to teach you more, you should have just told me."
"I didn't want to bother you." he said sounding embarrassed.
"Dennis, you're my brother. You can ask me things. In fact, I'll teach you something Austin taught me the first time we snuck out of camp and into the city together right now."
"Really?" he asked excitedly.
"Yeah." I said.
"Ok," he said grinning. "What is it?"
"Close your eyes, and stand very still." I said and he did as he was told.
I walked over to the nearest bike rack outside a toy store and opened one of the cord bike locks mentally, then walked back to Dennis.
I quickly grabbed his hands, and pulled them behind him.
"What the-" he started his eyes opening but I'd already wound the cord around his wrists and closed the lock around a street light.
"Get out of that." I said and he looked at me his eyes wide. "And when you do, meet me at the visitors' center."
"Are you kidding me?" he shouted after me as I walked away. "Thea!"
I waved over my shoulder at him and grinned, then turned the corner wondering how long it would take him.
…..
A half an hour later, I was sitting at a small table watching people come and go from the modern looking building, drinking hot chocolate dispensed from a vending machine in a Styrofoam cup.
"You are just the worst." Dennis said flopping into the seat opposite next to mine.
"You look cold." I said amused and offering him the steaming cup. "Want some?"
He glared at me but took the drink.
"Do you know how hard it is to open a lock you can't see?" he asked grumpily.
"But you learned something didn't you?"
"There are other ways you could have taught me that." He said scowling.
"I find panic is a good educational tool."
"Austin never really did that to you did he?"
"No." I admitted. "But next time you question my loyalty to our family, I won't be as kind."
"I guess I deserved that." He said with a sigh.
"Yeah. You did. But there are things I can teach you. Something that will help us find Adam I think."
He raised and eyebrow and I rolled my eyes.
"I'm not going to do anything to you." I said in exasperation and I took out a pamphlet about the industrial section of the city I'd found in the many information kiosks around the center.
"Why do I care about shipping warehouses?" he asked as I spread it over the table.
"You shouldn't." I said tapping one of the pictures. "But you should care about this one."
"Amazon, what like the website?"
I nodded.
"Oh c'mon Thea." He said frowning. "Don't you think that's a bit obvious?"
"Not everything needs to be subtle." I said shrugging. "They're a proud, powerful society. I'm not surprised they'd want their name out there. It's pretty clever if you think about it. They're hiding in plain sight."
"So you really think he's there?"
Another nod.
"So what's your plan? We're just going to walk in there and ask for your boyfriend is?"
"Nope." I said. "This is where you're training starts."
"What do you mean?"
"We're going to break in." I said. "And you're going to plan how."